The Katyn Order (36 page)

He stood on the sidewalk, glancing up and down the deserted street, hesitating. He remembered a similar moment back in Warsaw when he had stood outside the breach in the old city wall while Natalia waited for him in the ammunition cellar. He had hesitated then as well, but he'd had to leave when Rabbit suddenly arrived.

Or, had he?

On that night, Natalia wanted to be his friend. A simple thing, a friend: someone to talk to, someone to share his fears, his anger, his hopes for a future. But he didn't have friends; he
couldn't
have friends. It wasn't possible. Friends, relationships of any kind, were a distraction, and distractions led to mistakes.

Assassins could not make mistakes.

He should leave. Get lost for a few hours and take the evening bus to Nowy Targ. That was the sensible thing to do. Focus on the mission. Find Banach and the Katyn Order. Natalia had done her part and there was no reason to put her in any more danger. Back in Warsaw, she had wanted a friend. But he knew it was far more than that now. If he couldn't be her friend then, he certainly couldn't be her lover now, not ever.

There were no second chances . . . and there would be no
redemption.

And worst of all, he knew there would be no release from the yearning he felt to touch Natalia, to kiss her, to . . .

He had to leave.

Adam started back up the street, walking briskly, his mind made up. It was the right thing to do.

He approached the end of the block and was about to turn the corner, when he noticed an old man shuffling along the sidewalk on the other side of the street, poking into the gutter with a long stick. Adam slowed his pace. The man looked at him for a moment, then nodded, tipped his grimy, felt cap and shuffled on. Adam stopped and watched as the man proceeded down the street, turned the corner and disappeared . . . alone.

Adam turned and looked back down the street, toward the building where Natalia waited.
What the hell is wrong with me?

He turned around and walked back to the run-down building, his desire now overpowering. He climbed the stairs to the third floor and found the key behind the radiator. He paused for a moment outside room no. 34 . . . then inserted the key in the lock and pushed open the door.

Natalia sat on the bed wearing only a partially buttoned cotton shirt over her bra and panties. Her knees were drawn up, her arms clasped around them.

Adam glanced around the room, avoiding her eyes. The curtains were drawn, but the window was open at the bottom and a soft breeze fluttered in. “Jastremski was very helpful,” he said quickly. “But I've got to go. There's not much time and . . .”

He stopped and looked at her, suddenly struck with a terrible fear that if he took his eyes off of her for just an instant, she'd be gone, like that last night in Warsaw.

Natalia cocked her head and smiled. “You look very hot—and tired.” She slid over, making room on the narrow bed, beckoning for him to sit down.

“You know who I am, Natalia. You know what I've done.”

“Yes, I do. Now come and sit down. I won't bite.”

Adam closed the door and locked it. He set his briefcase on the floor, draped his suit coat over the back of the single chair and sat next to her.

She reached up and stroked the scar on the left side of his face, looking at his damaged ear. “Did that happen at Raczynski Palace?”

He nodded.

“You could have been killed. Why did you—” She stopped and bit her lower lip. “I'm sorry. It doesn't matter.” She looked into his eyes. “I was in love with you, Adam.”

A knot twisted in his stomach. “And now?” he whispered.

A tear formed in the corner of her eye and trickled down her cheek. “I loved you. I couldn't explain it; we barely knew each other. But I also
hated
you for leaving that night. I hated that you were determined to throw away your life—and
my
life, what we might have had together. And I hated
myself
for not stopping you. And then, the day before yesterday, when you stepped onto that tram . . .”

Adam reached over and brushed away the tear, running his finger slowly down her cheek, feeling as though he had drifted through a passageway, leaving a dark place and entering a brighter one. “That night, at the palace in Warsaw, my last thought was that I had been given a gift. In the midst of all that horror, I had been given a gift—and I threw it away.”

“We have another chance, Adam.”

He touched her knee, tracing a circle with his finger, looking into her eyes. “I want to believe that.”

She placed her hand on top of his and caressed his fingers, reached up and loosened his tie, slowly pulling it off his neck.

With a tremor in his fingers, he undid the rest of the buttons on her thin, cotton shirt and slid it off her shoulders.

She closed her eyes and leaned back, leading his hand slowly up her thigh. Her face was flushed, her hair wet around the edges, sticking to her forehead. Beads of perspiration trickled down her neck and disappeared between her breasts.

Adam leaned forward and kissed her neck.

She snuggled close as his other hand moved around her back, finding the clasp of her bra.

They lay curled together under the sheet as the late afternoon sun filtered through the grimy windowpane. Natalia rested her head on his chest, listening to the soft beating of his heart, feeling a warmth inside she had only dreamt about. If only they could stay right here, curled up in this shabby little room, just the two of them, and ignore everything that was happening in the world, she would be happy.

But that wasn't possible. There were things they had to do. And she had to tell him about the two NKVD agents she had murdered. But not right now. For just a few more moments all she wanted to think about was Adam. She snuggled closer and whispered, “You haven't told me how you managed to get out of Warsaw.”

He sighed as he ran his fingers through her hair. “Well, I still had that motorcycle, and the German uniform—”

She abruptly sat up. “My God, you mean that Waffen-SS uniform you wore when you shot Heisenberg? You kept it?”

“Stashed away with the motorcycle. It was almost a month before I could walk—I get these dizzy spells—and I was surprised that the motorcycle and the uniform were still there. But it got me out of the city.”

She put her hand on his cheek, leaned over and gently kissed his mangled ear. “Dizzy spells?”

“They come and go, but it's getting better. I don't hear so well out of that ear though.”

She furled her brow, gently rubbing his forehead. “The dizzy spells are probably the after-effect of a concussion from the gunshot.”

He smiled. “Ah yes, the medical student, whose father was a doctor. So, what about the hearing loss?”

“Hmm, let's see, could be a ruptured eardrum, or possibly a dislocation of the tiny bones in the middle ear. A loud, sharp noise or a blow to the head could cause either one.” She slid her forefinger along the thin scar where the bullet had grazed his cheekbone before tearing his ear in half.

“I'm impressed. Apparently you paid attention in class.”

“Whichever it is, it appears as though you're damaged goods. Guess I'll have to toss you back.”

He slid his hand around her bare back and pulled her on top of him. “Right now?”

“Well, maybe not right now.”

Later, they sat on the bed, and Natalia listened intently as he described his meeting at the library. “At least Jastremski doesn't know who
you
are,” Adam said. “He told me he never knew who received the documents he got from Banach. He just gave them to the priest.”

“When do you have to leave?”

“This evening, by bus to Nowy Targ.”

“Is your uncle still there?”

“I don't know. Jastremski's had no contact with him since January. He left him with the Górale at a small chapel somewhere beyond Nowy Targ. I'm to rendezvous with ‘Tytus' and use my code name, ‘Wolf.' After that, I'm not sure.”

Natalia was quiet for a long time, then slowly shook her head. “I can't go with you, Adam. We can't risk getting caught together. You'll be safer on your own.”

Adam stared at her, suddenly remembering the other information Jastremski had given him. “Do you know anything about two NKVD agents who were killed near Zyrardow three weeks ago?” he asked.

“Now you know why we can't risk being caught together.”

Adam wasn't surprised. Natalia was perfectly capable of shooting two NKVD agents if she had to. And she was right about the risk of being caught together, though at this moment he couldn't bear the thought of leaving her again. “Is there anything else I should know?”

Natalia stood up and stepped across the tiny room, wearing only her white cotton shirt. Adam suddenly felt aroused again at the sight of her small firm buttocks.

She lifted Banach's journal off the top of the bureau and turned around, clutching it to her chest. “Today is Friday. If you're not back by the middle of next week, I'll come up there and find you.” She handed him the journal. “Take this with you.” Then she picked the rest of her clothes off the chair and began getting dressed.

Adam sighed and set the journal on the bed. He reached for his glasses, then got up and pulled on his trousers. He removed his suit coat from the hook on the wall, withdrew a folded sheet of paper from the breast pocket and handed it to Natalia. “It's a copy of a letter of authorization,” he said, “from General Kovalenko of the Red Army. It requires all Russian Army officers to offer their assistance and cooperation. I have the original.”

“
You
have a letter of authorization from a Russian general?”

“Whitehall arranged it.” Adam explained how Kovalenko was an old friend of Whitehall's—and half Polish.

“And you trust Whitehall?” Natalia asked skeptically.

Adam remembered Whitehall's “deceptions.”

“I don't know who to trust.”

“Has it occurred to you that all of these people could be after the same thing, but for different reasons?”

Adam remained silent, waiting for her to continue.

Natalia paced around the room, running a hand through her short-cropped hair. “We have the journal, so we know a few things for sure. We know that Hans Frank had a visitor in 1942—most likely it was Tarnov—who gave him a copy of Stalin's Katyn Order. We know that the order exists, and we know what it says. As for the rest of your little group of friends—Whitehall, Kovalenko and Andreyev—they
don't
know for sure that Stalin's order actually exists. But they suspect that Tarnov gave Frank
something
that implicates the NKVD in the Katyn murders.”

“And they want to find it and make it public to expose the NKVD,” Adam said in agreement.

“Or, make sure it never sees the light of day. There are powerful forces at work here, Adam. And the question remains: Who do we trust?”

Adam rubbed the numb side of his face. He felt as if he were riding a runaway train barreling through a long, dark tunnel with no idea what was at the other end. Both Whitehall and Kovalenko had lied to him on more than one occasion. But he had to make a decision. “You have a copy of Kovalenko's letter of authorization. Tarnov is desperate. If I get into trouble and don't return on time you're going to need help. Use that letter to contact Kovalenko or send a message to Whitehall. We don't have any other options.”

She turned away and stepped to the window, parting the curtain a bit. The copy of Kovalenko's letter slipped from her hand and fluttered to the floor. “We could leave,” she said quietly. “We could forget all this and go up into the mountains, cross over into Slovakia. We escaped Warsaw; we could escape this.”

Adam took her shoulders in his hands and kissed the back of her neck. “Is that what you want?”

Natalia was silent for a moment then abruptly turned around, facing him. “Yes, it's what I want. But first, we have to finish this. The Russians burned my village to the ground, and they deported my parents to God-knows-where in Kazakhstan or Siberia.” She swallowed hard, her eyes glistening. “And they murdered my brother in the Katyn Forest. They murdered him—shot him in the back of the head—and threw his body in a ditch.”

Adam felt her tremble for just an instant, then she stiffened and glared at him. “We have to find that order,” Natalia said, her eyes suddenly cold and hard. “We have to
finish
this.”

15 J
UNE

T
HE AGING BUS CREAKED
and groaned, black smoke belching from its exhaust pipe as it toiled along the gravel roadway following the River Raba south from Krakow. The engine labored and the driver jammed the transmission into a lower gear as they climbed the foothills of the Tatra Mountains.

Adam glanced around at the handful of other passengers, then looked out the window and caught a glimpse of the peaks in the distance, remembering how he had hiked through these mountains during the summer of 1938. He had just completed his second term at the Jagiellonian University law school and had taken a break from the legal research he was doing for his uncle. It seemed an eternity ago.

The sun was setting in the western sky, casting long shadows over the grassy meadows nestled between rolling hills and pine forests. The tranquility of the bucolic scene was almost enough to make him forget the danger of the impending mission.

He was close to finding his uncle, but he felt as though he were running toward a door that was about to close. Tarnov and his NKVD thugs were out there somewhere—and they might not be his only problem. As his mind swirled with the uncertainty of who to trust, Adam glanced down at the journal he'd just finished reading. The story of his uncle's incredible journey both haunted and inspired him. He recalled the opening words of his uncle's first entry: